Who are the dangerous people that our intelligence agencies like CSIS, the RCMP, the department of defence and others are watching? Why, they're watching you. You are actually paying taxes to support people who are spying on you.
And what does you mean? Terrorists? the criminally insane? Oil companies that spread pollution and sickness and death?
Well, no. You aren't any of those, of course. They spy on people who are worried about the effects of global climate change, people who want to protect what is left of our fishery,native peoples who don't want mines that spill poisonous trash into their rives, people who don't want their drinkinig water poisoned or their land destroyed. Dangerous people like that - some of whom even deny basic decency by flaunting beards.
They are all acting within the law. But the law is irrelevant. The Harper government has no interest in upholding the law. (Indeed, they are more interested in getting rid of it -as Harper has done by destroying the bulk of our environmental laws, and cutting the budgets for the few that survive.
Harper is not interested in protecting the law. Nor is CSIS. Nor, too often, are the police forces of this country. They're interest is in protecting the status quo, which includes the power of the super rich to abuse this country and its people.
Now, throughout the history of this Canada, there is very, very little evidence of abuse of the law by environmental groups or native peoples - and the latter only when driven to desperation. So what do our spy agencies do with their information?
Well, since 2005, they have been holding meetings twice a year with senior executives, good ol' boys from our leadng corporations. The corporate bosses get full information on who the leaders of certain groups are, what the groups are planning, what they're, what public relations moves they will make....
Your tax dollars at work. Figure that big business doesn't want big government? Well, it talks the talk, but it doesn't walk the walk. Big business just loves big government to fight its wars, to beat down opposition to what it is doing, to give it cushy contrtacts, to tell it state secrets. Big business loves and wants big government. It just doesn't want to pay for it. So we do.
Figure they'll hold meetings twice a year to to tell you, say, what shale gas companies are planning? In fact, do you think they'll even spy on the super-rich? Dream on.
All the information above does not, of course, come from our private news media and, Lord knows, not from the Irving press. The information was gathered under the access to information act, and published by The Dominion, an organ of Media-Co-op. It appeared on Oct. 10 of 2011.
As a kid at boy scout camp, I used to play in an annual softball game with RCMP officers. It was a thrill to see their T-shirts with the motto "maintien le droit", maintain the law. But that was a long time ago. Now, it's 'maintain the status quo', protect the super rich so they can get richer..
What has happened is that, in practical terms, we are not equal under the law. What has happened is that government, instead of controlling big business through legislation, now has merged with big business. They are one and the same.
And the correct term for that is not democracy. The correct term for a government which is a merger of government and big business is fascism. We are re-living the first half of the twentieth century. We already have a Mussolini in Ottawa. At this rate, it is only a question of time before we have a Hitler.
Once moral rot sets well in, no society survives. There always has been a certain amount of moral rot, of course, in any human institutions. But in governments across Canada we now see a moral rot so profound in both governments and business that------well, among other things, it means that New Brunswick should wake up pretty damn soon. As things are, we are close to dead meat.
________________________________________________________________________________
Then there's our Health Minister, Mr. Flemming. He really has been working up a sweat recently to get his name and comments in the news. My, this is sudden. It's also been pretty ham-handed.
By supporting shale gas, Mr. Flemming has publicly insulted his Chief Public Health Officers and, indeed, the whole medical profession or this province - not to say the world. Now he has added to it with the double-billing story in which he has been making public accusations, without having yet examined the whole file. Now, he is having a tantrum over ER service, and is doing so in a way to antagonze the doctors even more.
What's this all about? That queston drove me to take a look at his google biographies. Interestingly, his background does not seem to include any medical training. And, though trained as a lawyer, he seems to have been most active and successful as a businessman. And that might give us a hint to what is happening.
I think it likely that Mr. Flemming has been told to cut health spending. Now, when you are dealing with such a question, and one which also involves people's lives, you work WITH the professionals. You do not insult and attack them publicly. That is particularly important because the professionals in this case have a powerful moral obligation to do what is best for the patients.
Mr. Flemming's office should have conducted a full study of options with the professonals to see whether cost-cutting could have been achieved without harm to the patients. Is there a way of re-thinking or re-orgnizing the handling of emergency cases? But this does not seem to have happened.
Of course not. Mr. Flemming's background is largely (and very successfully) in business. In business, cutting is simple. The bottom line is bad? - so slash something, anything that is easy to cut while still turning out a sort of decent product.
The concept that a health system is not a corporation dealing with things, but a profession dealing with human life, is probably not familiar to him. When you are dealing with people, you do, of course, sometimes have to cut costs. But, unlike big business, you cannot simply cut. You have to cut without doing damage to people. They, and not the balance sheet, are your bottom line.
And as a businessman, Mr. Flemming does not consult with the hired help for advice on how to run the business. He is boss. They obey. That's it. That's why he seems not to understand that he is not the boss, not in that autocratic sense. He is a leader, yes. He sets a suitable tone for dealing with professionals who are concerned essentially with people who need care. That means that those human needs must be a factor in his leadership.
This is not simple, bottom-line commercial leadership. The is a profoundly moral issue. But Mr. Flemming appears to understand none of that, particularly the last part.
The nature of the business world promotes arrogance in leadership and, dare I say it, a certain amount of moral and ethical vacuity.
Mr. Flemming does not seem to understand the role of a cabinet minister. Nor can I see any trace ot a moral foundation to his thinking.
So - we have a government determined to cut costs so that it won't have to annoy the rich with higher taxes. Flemming has been told to cut costs. So, as if he were a corporation boss, he intends to do it by going to war with the whole health profession.
This suggests, at one's kindest, an utter incompetence for his duties as a cabinet minister.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Jan.19: The business of reporting....
This is not (read NOT) a criticism of reporters. It is a criticism of editors and the whole news business.
Back when we were both starting out in the world world, a classmate became a journalist - and a very good one, retiring as news chief for CBC in Montreat. But his first job......
......was with Canadian Press. It assigned him to cover the Quebec assembly. He couldn't speak a word of French. (He would later become quite fluent in it but, oh, it was hell trying to cover Quebec politics without any ability to speak the language. And that sort of assignment is not unusual in journalism.
No editor would think of sending a reporter to cover a hockey game if the reporter had never even seen a game in his life. Readers would be enraged if he did. But that sort of standard is to be found only in sports spages and Hollywood gossip columns. Otherwise, reporters are commonly assigned to topics they know nothing about. That's why they end up writing whatever they're told; there are no probing question because the reporter has no idea what to probe.
Today has two, big stories on education on A1 and A15. The headline for the first is "Student success depends on monitoring". (standardized testing). Oh? Really? Then how come millions of schools all over the world have produced successful students without monitoring? (This one shows us that the editor is ignorant of education, too, because it's the editor who writers the headlines.)
If you read those two stories, it's obvious that the reporter wrote down only what she was told to write down. There appear to have been no questions except, perhaps, for, "could you repeat that last line, please?"
But there were questions to ask. The reference is to standardized, province-wide testing. And there are lots of questions to ask.
The pressure for these exams began with Atlantic Insitute of Market Studies (which itself knows nothing about education.) Thanks to its connection with names like Irving, it got a contract to set up and administer such tests. And why would Mr. Irving (who almost certainly also knows nothing about education) have such a keen interest? Well, it might have something to do with the big push for privatization of education in the US which has produced great profits at the expense of parents, made a shambles of the whole US education system, and left the remaining public schools as an (underfunded) jungle for the poor.
Does AIMS still hold that contract? Is privatization of our public schools still the objective?
The results show improvement in learning. Yes, indeed. But could a smart exam-setter rig that by making the exams a little easier each year - or by easing up on the marking?
What also can (and does) happen is that the exam can determine what the curriculum will be. In other words, schools are forced to teach for the exam, rather than for the students. And, no, the two are not the same.
There are lots of other questions. But you'll find none of them asked in this "Special Report". The result - a story that really tells us nothing - but does feed us a propaganda line favouring the Department of Education and, possibly, AIMS and Mr. Irving.
Again, it's not the reporter's fault. It's the fault of a journalism tradition of laziness and sloppiness at the highest levels. That's why the only pages you can trust are sports and gossip. (Usually).
____________________________________________________________________________________
There's a good story on C1, "Native Women lash out at Harper". One of the women is quoted as saying, "There are strong and growing racial undertones to much of the reaction seen so far to protests over aboriginal treaty rights." Of course there are.
Canadians have a powerful tradition of racism. They don't know it, partly because you'll find very little of it in school history courses, and partly because very few racists ever realize that they are racist. Nothing wrong with them. It's always that other group that looks different from them that's the problem.
Harper is quite deliberately exploiting the racism he knows is there. O, Canada.
Incidentally, some news sources carried the story that the Queen has announced that she does not wish to become involved in the Idle No More controversy. Very impressive. I'm surprised to see it not quoted in today's editorial. However, that story just takes us back to the sloppiness of the world of journalism.
The Queen can say only what her advisor tells her to say - and she MUST say that. Her advisor in Canadian matters is Harper. Most of the stories I've seen don't mention that.
_________________________________________________________________________________
You will learn nothing about Syria, Mali, Algeria, Libya or most of Africa. The suffering is terrible. But it doesn't matter because they aren't real people like us. Most of the fighting is inspired, supplied and encouraged by us. But that doesn't matter because they aren't real people like us. In Syria the foreign mercenaries, heavily made up of Al Quaeda and other jihadists are still called "rebels" even though they aren't Syrians at all.
Our "liberation" of Libya has created a dysfunctional country that is a safe haven for Al-Quaeda and a great supplier of weapons. France's intervention in Mali, now spreading to Algreria, has provided a great boost for Al Quaeda, making it more powerful than it has ever been - and rolling in money donated by our good allies in Saudi Arabia (the country which supplied most of the 9/11 terrorists but was never even slapped on the wrist. Quite a contrast with Afghanistan and Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11. Israel is moving even further to the far right, is determined to rule Palestine forever (according to Nethanyahu) and determined to attack Iran. But it has nowhere close to the population to do all that. However, it does have some 200 (at least) nuclear weapons. Something to look forward to.
Iraq is on the edge of collapsing into a civil war. Afghanistan has been a military, economic and human disaster with no hope of a win for us - or even a definition of what a win could possibly mean.
What a comfort to know that American big business has been in control of all this (a sort of PPP), and has also driven the US into unadmitted bankruptcy and poverty.
So just trust the wisdom of big business to look after these things. Just read your Times and Transcript; and you won't even know anything is happening.
Oh, a recent BBC polls shows that a majority of Syrians actually support the government, not the 'rebels'. However, our business leaders are confident they know better. That's why they're supporting the 'rebels' and want to make them the government - even though Syrians don't want them, and even though the 'rebels' are heavily jihadist.
Our business leaders are deep thinkers. Deep. It's the old delusion, "If I'm rich, I must be smart."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Our beloved Health Minister seems to be pushing himself into the news a great deal lately. He publicly humiliates his chief health adviser ;and ignores her advice so he can support shale gas. He has launched a pre-emptive and scatter-gun attack on the whole medical profession over a billing story whose facts, as even he admits, are not clear. Now, he announces that the Emergency Room system doesn't make sense.
Medical professionals, some of whom know almost as much about medicine as Mr. Flemming does, say that what he labels as not making sense because of its cost does make sense. It doesn't make sense on a corporate balance sheet; but it make sense because of patient needs. (And one would think that patient needs are kind of important in all this brouhaha.)
What's obvious is that Mr. Flemming is seeking attention (perhaps socially lonely; and I could understand that),perhaps because he has some political objective. What's also obvious is that he is publicly humiliating and damaging the whole medical system in this province. And he's doing it with stunning arrogance, and arrogance that does not seem to be matched by his intellect.
He might also consider buying shirts one size (at least) larger so he can do up the top button, and properly align his necktie.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Norbert Cunningham's column should be on the Faith page. Quite seriously. It's far better than anything else I have ever seen on that page. Agree with him or disagree (and I pretty much agree) this is a well-researched and we-expressed opinion. This is exactly what we should see on an editorial page.
Bill Belliveau is enthusiastic about Obama's plans for gun control. I do wish I could agree. The US, from years of illusions created by super-patriotic classes, movies, books about American history and further brainwashed by news media, is a nation os people who live in fear and paranoia. And who worship violence. Generals are heroes and serious possibilities for president in the US that in any other democracy I know. Then take a look at the latest issues of Batman and Superman comics. The heroes aren't only violent; they're seriously mentally disturbed. Evil is everywhere. Violence is the only answer.
Already convinced that government threatens freedom (in fact, personal freedom was destroyed a long time ago in the US - by government, but by government controlled by big money), gun-owners, already driven to a frenzy by the NRA in addition to the regular brainwashing, are almost certain to react with violence.
Incidentally, one third of all gun deaths in the US are suicides. Another big bloc of deaths is children, often by accident with a gun owned by a family member. Then there's domestic violence. I could not find any shootings in the US related to defending freedom.
Brent Mazerolle's column is the usual trivia that should not be on an op ed page. It belongs on a page with the game, "How many differences can you find between these two pictures?"
Gwynne Dyer's column is superb - and more than a little frightening.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Letters to the editor has a letter than is painful to me. "Was Samaritan victim of scam?" It's from a reader who was approached by a pesentable young man who told him he needed $13 buy milk for his baby. Next day, he met an old friend who had been approaced by almost certainly the same man with the same story. The writer was embarassed at feeling he had been naive. Let me ease his embarassment.
In downtown Montreal, I was on my way to meet friends at a watering-hole. A shabby man with his hand on his throat apprached me. He was stranded in Montreal on his way to a hospital for treatment for cancer of the throat. Could I help him get something to eat?
Well, gee. Cancer. Stranded. So I gave him the price of decent meal. He took the money with the hand that had been on his throat,and breathed a thank you on me. He reeked of alcohol.
I prefer to think someone must have spilled it on him.
_____________________________________________________
Back when we were both starting out in the world world, a classmate became a journalist - and a very good one, retiring as news chief for CBC in Montreat. But his first job......
......was with Canadian Press. It assigned him to cover the Quebec assembly. He couldn't speak a word of French. (He would later become quite fluent in it but, oh, it was hell trying to cover Quebec politics without any ability to speak the language. And that sort of assignment is not unusual in journalism.
No editor would think of sending a reporter to cover a hockey game if the reporter had never even seen a game in his life. Readers would be enraged if he did. But that sort of standard is to be found only in sports spages and Hollywood gossip columns. Otherwise, reporters are commonly assigned to topics they know nothing about. That's why they end up writing whatever they're told; there are no probing question because the reporter has no idea what to probe.
Today has two, big stories on education on A1 and A15. The headline for the first is "Student success depends on monitoring". (standardized testing). Oh? Really? Then how come millions of schools all over the world have produced successful students without monitoring? (This one shows us that the editor is ignorant of education, too, because it's the editor who writers the headlines.)
If you read those two stories, it's obvious that the reporter wrote down only what she was told to write down. There appear to have been no questions except, perhaps, for, "could you repeat that last line, please?"
But there were questions to ask. The reference is to standardized, province-wide testing. And there are lots of questions to ask.
The pressure for these exams began with Atlantic Insitute of Market Studies (which itself knows nothing about education.) Thanks to its connection with names like Irving, it got a contract to set up and administer such tests. And why would Mr. Irving (who almost certainly also knows nothing about education) have such a keen interest? Well, it might have something to do with the big push for privatization of education in the US which has produced great profits at the expense of parents, made a shambles of the whole US education system, and left the remaining public schools as an (underfunded) jungle for the poor.
Does AIMS still hold that contract? Is privatization of our public schools still the objective?
The results show improvement in learning. Yes, indeed. But could a smart exam-setter rig that by making the exams a little easier each year - or by easing up on the marking?
What also can (and does) happen is that the exam can determine what the curriculum will be. In other words, schools are forced to teach for the exam, rather than for the students. And, no, the two are not the same.
There are lots of other questions. But you'll find none of them asked in this "Special Report". The result - a story that really tells us nothing - but does feed us a propaganda line favouring the Department of Education and, possibly, AIMS and Mr. Irving.
Again, it's not the reporter's fault. It's the fault of a journalism tradition of laziness and sloppiness at the highest levels. That's why the only pages you can trust are sports and gossip. (Usually).
____________________________________________________________________________________
There's a good story on C1, "Native Women lash out at Harper". One of the women is quoted as saying, "There are strong and growing racial undertones to much of the reaction seen so far to protests over aboriginal treaty rights." Of course there are.
Canadians have a powerful tradition of racism. They don't know it, partly because you'll find very little of it in school history courses, and partly because very few racists ever realize that they are racist. Nothing wrong with them. It's always that other group that looks different from them that's the problem.
Harper is quite deliberately exploiting the racism he knows is there. O, Canada.
Incidentally, some news sources carried the story that the Queen has announced that she does not wish to become involved in the Idle No More controversy. Very impressive. I'm surprised to see it not quoted in today's editorial. However, that story just takes us back to the sloppiness of the world of journalism.
The Queen can say only what her advisor tells her to say - and she MUST say that. Her advisor in Canadian matters is Harper. Most of the stories I've seen don't mention that.
_________________________________________________________________________________
You will learn nothing about Syria, Mali, Algeria, Libya or most of Africa. The suffering is terrible. But it doesn't matter because they aren't real people like us. Most of the fighting is inspired, supplied and encouraged by us. But that doesn't matter because they aren't real people like us. In Syria the foreign mercenaries, heavily made up of Al Quaeda and other jihadists are still called "rebels" even though they aren't Syrians at all.
Our "liberation" of Libya has created a dysfunctional country that is a safe haven for Al-Quaeda and a great supplier of weapons. France's intervention in Mali, now spreading to Algreria, has provided a great boost for Al Quaeda, making it more powerful than it has ever been - and rolling in money donated by our good allies in Saudi Arabia (the country which supplied most of the 9/11 terrorists but was never even slapped on the wrist. Quite a contrast with Afghanistan and Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11. Israel is moving even further to the far right, is determined to rule Palestine forever (according to Nethanyahu) and determined to attack Iran. But it has nowhere close to the population to do all that. However, it does have some 200 (at least) nuclear weapons. Something to look forward to.
Iraq is on the edge of collapsing into a civil war. Afghanistan has been a military, economic and human disaster with no hope of a win for us - or even a definition of what a win could possibly mean.
What a comfort to know that American big business has been in control of all this (a sort of PPP), and has also driven the US into unadmitted bankruptcy and poverty.
So just trust the wisdom of big business to look after these things. Just read your Times and Transcript; and you won't even know anything is happening.
Oh, a recent BBC polls shows that a majority of Syrians actually support the government, not the 'rebels'. However, our business leaders are confident they know better. That's why they're supporting the 'rebels' and want to make them the government - even though Syrians don't want them, and even though the 'rebels' are heavily jihadist.
Our business leaders are deep thinkers. Deep. It's the old delusion, "If I'm rich, I must be smart."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Our beloved Health Minister seems to be pushing himself into the news a great deal lately. He publicly humiliates his chief health adviser ;and ignores her advice so he can support shale gas. He has launched a pre-emptive and scatter-gun attack on the whole medical profession over a billing story whose facts, as even he admits, are not clear. Now, he announces that the Emergency Room system doesn't make sense.
Medical professionals, some of whom know almost as much about medicine as Mr. Flemming does, say that what he labels as not making sense because of its cost does make sense. It doesn't make sense on a corporate balance sheet; but it make sense because of patient needs. (And one would think that patient needs are kind of important in all this brouhaha.)
What's obvious is that Mr. Flemming is seeking attention (perhaps socially lonely; and I could understand that),perhaps because he has some political objective. What's also obvious is that he is publicly humiliating and damaging the whole medical system in this province. And he's doing it with stunning arrogance, and arrogance that does not seem to be matched by his intellect.
He might also consider buying shirts one size (at least) larger so he can do up the top button, and properly align his necktie.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Norbert Cunningham's column should be on the Faith page. Quite seriously. It's far better than anything else I have ever seen on that page. Agree with him or disagree (and I pretty much agree) this is a well-researched and we-expressed opinion. This is exactly what we should see on an editorial page.
Bill Belliveau is enthusiastic about Obama's plans for gun control. I do wish I could agree. The US, from years of illusions created by super-patriotic classes, movies, books about American history and further brainwashed by news media, is a nation os people who live in fear and paranoia. And who worship violence. Generals are heroes and serious possibilities for president in the US that in any other democracy I know. Then take a look at the latest issues of Batman and Superman comics. The heroes aren't only violent; they're seriously mentally disturbed. Evil is everywhere. Violence is the only answer.
Already convinced that government threatens freedom (in fact, personal freedom was destroyed a long time ago in the US - by government, but by government controlled by big money), gun-owners, already driven to a frenzy by the NRA in addition to the regular brainwashing, are almost certain to react with violence.
Incidentally, one third of all gun deaths in the US are suicides. Another big bloc of deaths is children, often by accident with a gun owned by a family member. Then there's domestic violence. I could not find any shootings in the US related to defending freedom.
Brent Mazerolle's column is the usual trivia that should not be on an op ed page. It belongs on a page with the game, "How many differences can you find between these two pictures?"
Gwynne Dyer's column is superb - and more than a little frightening.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Letters to the editor has a letter than is painful to me. "Was Samaritan victim of scam?" It's from a reader who was approached by a pesentable young man who told him he needed $13 buy milk for his baby. Next day, he met an old friend who had been approaced by almost certainly the same man with the same story. The writer was embarassed at feeling he had been naive. Let me ease his embarassment.
In downtown Montreal, I was on my way to meet friends at a watering-hole. A shabby man with his hand on his throat apprached me. He was stranded in Montreal on his way to a hospital for treatment for cancer of the throat. Could I help him get something to eat?
Well, gee. Cancer. Stranded. So I gave him the price of decent meal. He took the money with the hand that had been on his throat,and breathed a thank you on me. He reeked of alcohol.
I prefer to think someone must have spilled it on him.
_____________________________________________________
Friday, January 18, 2013
Jan.18: Wow! Read all about it!
NOTE.
For some reason, my column suddenly narrowed, and some of the print turned red. I have no idea why, and the computer refused to discuss it with me. I shall be grateful if any reader has a suggestion to offer.
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"Downtown apartment rising fast". That's what the Moncton Times and Transcript thinks is the sort of blazing hot news that should be the big headline at the top of the front page. And that's not all that's wrong with it.
Most of the story is pure gush and melodrama. It opens with a dramatic, "It's not your imagination". (Oh, be still, my heart. I must read more). "A new (comma missing) large apartment building at the Corner of Gordon Street and Cameron St. is going up faster than usual...."
(excuse me. I'm getting overexcited. I have to rush to the bathroom.)
The subhead tells us construction in downtown is booming. But there is no information to tell us exactly what "booming" means. In fact, there's no information about anything. It reminds me of that pre-Christmas story (also top of the front page) on how the old Main st. was just packed with shoppers - without the slightest evidence to support that remarkable statement for those of us who didn't notice any shopping on Main St.
This isn't a news story. There's no news in it. It's just adolescent gush - presumably linked to the 'gotta revive Main st.; gotta build a hundred million dollar hockey rink' campaign.
Any reporter who would write such an unethical 'news' story would be wise to insist that his name not appear anywhere close to it. And if I were looking for a job, I would not present this story as a sample of my work to any editor - except, of course, in New Brunswick.
There's also a big picture on the front page of people on snowmobiles - a collector's item for anyone who has never seen people on snowmobiles.
________________________________________
________________________________________
NewsToday carries the story that Canada has begun its one-day operation to supply a cargo aircraft to help Fremch forces in Mali. Actually, it's now a one-week operation; and Mali is also talking of the need for financial assistance from Canada in its war. It is also assisted by the US and Britain. But there is no clear indication of why France has troops in Mali.
Oh! Did you know Mali used to be a French colony? That the Mali war is now spreading into Algeria? That Algeria, too, was once a colony of France? Coincidence.
France and Britain and the US are also up to t heir ears in assisting the Syria 'rebels'. Syria used to be a colony of France, too. Coincidence.
In fact, the old colonial powers plus the US have been busy fomenting wars, drone-bombing, invading old African colonies. And the US has sent troops to garrison all of them.
Remember the Afghanistan war? It has cost a trillion dollars, uncounted tens of thousands of dead, and indescribable suffering. Why? Nobody knows.
Seriously.
The US government itself has no idea of any definition for victory in that war. It just wants to get out without looking too idiotic. Who wanted such an insane war?
It's no secret. It was a group largely of American big business leaders who called themselves neo-conservatives. They announced publicly back in the 1990s that they wanted to invade Afghanistan - though it was never clear why. One of their leaders was Dick Cheney (oil industry) who was Bush's VP. The Bush White House was full of neo-con businessmen.
They are the ones who committed the US to a disastrous and losing war in Afghanistan - and also to a war in Iraq where things have been coming apart for years now - though the TandT never tells us.
We have had some pretty powerful lessons over the last twenty years that leaders of big business are utterly incompetent to deal with national issues like war, economic planning, and social planning. Yet both Harper and Alward eagerly seek out the advice of the Irvings and McCains of this world. They have led us into disastrous times - and they haven't yet done their worst.
Democracy works. Capitalism works - within the controls of a democracy. Make the two partners, though, and what you get is the moral rot, greed, suffering and destruction called fascism.
Watch for Mali to flare up into a much bigger war. Watch for Canada to get sucked in by stages.
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Page C3 has a big map of electoral boundaries for New Brunswick. There is no clear label on it. But an almost illegible note in the lower left corner identifies it as the proposed new electoral map for New Brunswick.
A friend informs me that, in fact, the map shown is the old one. Those who want to see the proposed one should go to Google, type in Moncton Free Press, and go to yesterday's edition to see the correct map.
________________________________________________________________________________
The editorial is even more asinine than usual. It suggests Native Peoples should avoid public protests, and should win people's hearts, then work on their minds.
1. How can they win people's hearts or minds when most of our news media don't tell us that this is all about? What is happening on reserves? Why did Harper cut education funding for schools on reserves so that it is now well below national standards?
2. I see no sign that journalists of Canada have either hearts or minds to be won. Their reporting on Idle No More has been sloppy, ignorant and even racist. I suggest the knuckle-draggers read Christy Blatchford's ignorant and racist rant in The Globe and Mail of a few days ago.
3. Would the editor have advised Martin Luther King to quiet down his methods? Probably.
4. What does it matter if they win hearts and minds. Harper has made it clear he intends to ignore them no matter what. He wants their land so he can invite oil and mining companies to exploit it and pollute it. He's made that very clear.
Harper has neither a heart nor a mind to be won.
5. Look. Face it. We Canadians are viciously racist. We always have been. That's a problem not recognized by most Canadians, certainly not by those who think that all problems will be solved if we force children to stand up and listen to a squeaky version of O Canada every day in school.
Check out the daily CBC page on the net. Look for its report on Idle No More. Then read the comments from readers. They are ignorant of history, loutish and often racist. That's us. And it makes me ashamed to be a Canadian.
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Norbert has gone back to his old style of treating an opinion column as something quite different - a column of reports of things he has read - which he passes on simply as condensed information ( most of it useless if sometimes interesting), but offers no thought or insight at all.
Alec Bruce downplays social media and, from the point of view of most writers in the social media, it's no big money winner. But it is successful at great deal more than supporting charities. Social media gives us the information that the commercial media does not. The Times and Transcript, for example, publishes almost no news of any use. If you want to find out what's happening, you have to go to social media.
Admittedly, some social media outlets can be biased and even lying. But for the TandT, bias and lying are normal practice - so social media are still in the lead.
Steve Malloy is much improved. His column, too, is on Idle No More. But he works hard at offering a balanced view. And there is more information about the reasons for Idle No More than I have seen in all issues of the TandT put together. It neither supports nor attacks the movement. What is does is to try for a balanced presentation that should encourage thought. This is a good column.
Oh, but please drop the archaic language. Last week, it was terms like 'your humble columnist'. This week it's 'this fair city". That went out with spats. It's a term used now only by municipal politicians who have nothing else to say. Always keep writing clean, direct, and simple.
Excellent column by Suzuki.
There are some really good letters to the editor - and one bummer.
Outstanding is "Columnist's job is to comment. It's well written, and packs a solid punch. Also excellent are "Stop wholesale destruction of our heritage" and "No conditions on internet freedom".
But, oh, there's yet another one that the important thing in religious faith is that you must not believe in evolution. You can ignore the poor. You can hire single mothers at slave labour prices, you can kill people so long as they look, you know, different. You can make ordinary tax payers put out billions and even trillions for wars to make you richer, and then refuse to pay any taxes at all.
Kill, cheat, steal, subvert democracy to make yourself rich. And that's no problem. The Lord will forgive.
But believe in Darwinism? Then you never get to heaven and spend the next trillion years and more dancing around, singing your're a good God, God. And jumping up and down and clapping hands for Jesus.
Thanks. But if believing in Darwin will prevent me from spending eternity that way, I'll choose Darwin every time.
Get a life. And get a faith. A real one.
The idea of democracy is that we all have a right to have our own opinions, a right to express them publicly, and even to demonstrate peacefully. But a lofty position in society can give some people some pretty arrogant assumptions about just who is really allowed to have an opinion.
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Law and Order
Many years ago, I was pistol range officer for a very local police force, and became good friends with many of them. Those were the days anti-nuclear protests -always legal, always peaceful.
One of my friends couldn't wait for a local march to come along. He wanted to punch out one of those long haired hippies or anybody with a beard. He called them 'shit disturbers'.
Nothing in that had anything to do with the law. It had everything to do with protecting the interests of politicians and of very influential big business. In other words, he did not see his job so much as one protecting the law, but one of protecting the status quo. If you wanted change, then you were a suspect.
Then, as now, there were part-time soldiers, militia units, across Canada. These militia units had two primary roles. One was to be a social club for the wealthier citizens who were their officers. The other was to beat up on strikers. That second role was played quite frequently right across Canada. The last time, as I remember, was for a coal mine strike in Nova Scotia about 1920.
Like the NWMP, their role was not so much to enforce the law as to enforce the status quo. And that thinking remains common.
In the US, bankers cheated on a grand scale, and destroyed the economy. There were no charges. No pictures were taken. No names put on surveillance list. But Occupy Wall St. protesters who criticized (quite legally) what had been done were maced, their pictures and names put on record, their phone calls open to tapping - and many would end up on secret lists which forbade them to take a plane.
And God help you in the US if you look as though you might be Moslem.
When Tommy Douglas was an active politician, the RCMP kept him under surveillance for years. Douglas was profoundly religious, a clergyman, and as law-abiding as any human can be. But the RCMP considered him dangerous because he criticized the wealthy and the powerful. He introduced medicare. He wanted change. That made him a threat to the status quo, a 'shit disturber'. They have thousands of pages on him,thousands of pages of nothing.
When Mr. Irving and his friends announced they were members of the government - which means that they had a right to be involved in it without getting elected - that was a direct threat to democracy, and quite unconstitutional.(i.e. against the law). But nobody said a word.
Of course not. Mr. Irving and his friends have always run the government of New Brunswick. It may be unconstitutional. Certainly, if you or I were to bound into Alward's office and tell him what to do, there would be a policeman and the door in short time.
But in New Brunswick, that sort of behaviour is the status quo for the rich. It's in the interests of the wealthy and the influential. Therefore, it's okay.
However, if you, quite legally and peacefully, protest outside city hall, the police will have a video camera capturing your face.
Native peoples have been lied to and cheated by almost every federal government in the history of Canada. I have never heard of the police laying a charge against any liar or cheat in such a case. I have never heard of them putting the responsible minister under surveillance. But if native peoples use their legal right to protest, their pictures get taken, and their names put on lists.
If I were to steal a carton of cigarettes from a convenience store, I could face jail time. A British bank made billions of illegal dollars by laundering even more billions belonging to Mexican drug lords and to Al Quaeda. It was only with great difficulty that an attorney could get the case into court at all - and the only punishment was a fine.
Enforcing the law and protecting the status quo are not the same. But the wealthy and arrogant and influential think they are. They think that the primary job of the police is to keep things the way they like them. It's an attitude that is spread by newspapers (naming no names) that are ignorant or servile or both. The result is that it comes to be an attitude widely shared by all of us, and by the police.
For some reason, my column suddenly narrowed, and some of the print turned red. I have no idea why, and the computer refused to discuss it with me. I shall be grateful if any reader has a suggestion to offer.
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"Downtown apartment rising fast". That's what the Moncton Times and Transcript thinks is the sort of blazing hot news that should be the big headline at the top of the front page. And that's not all that's wrong with it.
Most of the story is pure gush and melodrama. It opens with a dramatic, "It's not your imagination". (Oh, be still, my heart. I must read more). "A new (comma missing) large apartment building at the Corner of Gordon Street and Cameron St. is going up faster than usual...."
(excuse me. I'm getting overexcited. I have to rush to the bathroom.)
The subhead tells us construction in downtown is booming. But there is no information to tell us exactly what "booming" means. In fact, there's no information about anything. It reminds me of that pre-Christmas story (also top of the front page) on how the old Main st. was just packed with shoppers - without the slightest evidence to support that remarkable statement for those of us who didn't notice any shopping on Main St.
This isn't a news story. There's no news in it. It's just adolescent gush - presumably linked to the 'gotta revive Main st.; gotta build a hundred million dollar hockey rink' campaign.
Any reporter who would write such an unethical 'news' story would be wise to insist that his name not appear anywhere close to it. And if I were looking for a job, I would not present this story as a sample of my work to any editor - except, of course, in New Brunswick.
There's also a big picture on the front page of people on snowmobiles - a collector's item for anyone who has never seen people on snowmobiles.
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NewsToday carries the story that Canada has begun its one-day operation to supply a cargo aircraft to help Fremch forces in Mali. Actually, it's now a one-week operation; and Mali is also talking of the need for financial assistance from Canada in its war. It is also assisted by the US and Britain. But there is no clear indication of why France has troops in Mali.
Oh! Did you know Mali used to be a French colony? That the Mali war is now spreading into Algeria? That Algeria, too, was once a colony of France? Coincidence.
France and Britain and the US are also up to t heir ears in assisting the Syria 'rebels'. Syria used to be a colony of France, too. Coincidence.
In fact, the old colonial powers plus the US have been busy fomenting wars, drone-bombing, invading old African colonies. And the US has sent troops to garrison all of them.
Remember the Afghanistan war? It has cost a trillion dollars, uncounted tens of thousands of dead, and indescribable suffering. Why? Nobody knows.
Seriously.
The US government itself has no idea of any definition for victory in that war. It just wants to get out without looking too idiotic. Who wanted such an insane war?
It's no secret. It was a group largely of American big business leaders who called themselves neo-conservatives. They announced publicly back in the 1990s that they wanted to invade Afghanistan - though it was never clear why. One of their leaders was Dick Cheney (oil industry) who was Bush's VP. The Bush White House was full of neo-con businessmen.
They are the ones who committed the US to a disastrous and losing war in Afghanistan - and also to a war in Iraq where things have been coming apart for years now - though the TandT never tells us.
We have had some pretty powerful lessons over the last twenty years that leaders of big business are utterly incompetent to deal with national issues like war, economic planning, and social planning. Yet both Harper and Alward eagerly seek out the advice of the Irvings and McCains of this world. They have led us into disastrous times - and they haven't yet done their worst.
Democracy works. Capitalism works - within the controls of a democracy. Make the two partners, though, and what you get is the moral rot, greed, suffering and destruction called fascism.
Watch for Mali to flare up into a much bigger war. Watch for Canada to get sucked in by stages.
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Page C3 has a big map of electoral boundaries for New Brunswick. There is no clear label on it. But an almost illegible note in the lower left corner identifies it as the proposed new electoral map for New Brunswick.
A friend informs me that, in fact, the map shown is the old one. Those who want to see the proposed one should go to Google, type in Moncton Free Press, and go to yesterday's edition to see the correct map.
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The editorial is even more asinine than usual. It suggests Native Peoples should avoid public protests, and should win people's hearts, then work on their minds.
1. How can they win people's hearts or minds when most of our news media don't tell us that this is all about? What is happening on reserves? Why did Harper cut education funding for schools on reserves so that it is now well below national standards?
2. I see no sign that journalists of Canada have either hearts or minds to be won. Their reporting on Idle No More has been sloppy, ignorant and even racist. I suggest the knuckle-draggers read Christy Blatchford's ignorant and racist rant in The Globe and Mail of a few days ago.
3. Would the editor have advised Martin Luther King to quiet down his methods? Probably.
4. What does it matter if they win hearts and minds. Harper has made it clear he intends to ignore them no matter what. He wants their land so he can invite oil and mining companies to exploit it and pollute it. He's made that very clear.
Harper has neither a heart nor a mind to be won.
5. Look. Face it. We Canadians are viciously racist. We always have been. That's a problem not recognized by most Canadians, certainly not by those who think that all problems will be solved if we force children to stand up and listen to a squeaky version of O Canada every day in school.
Check out the daily CBC page on the net. Look for its report on Idle No More. Then read the comments from readers. They are ignorant of history, loutish and often racist. That's us. And it makes me ashamed to be a Canadian.
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Norbert has gone back to his old style of treating an opinion column as something quite different - a column of reports of things he has read - which he passes on simply as condensed information ( most of it useless if sometimes interesting), but offers no thought or insight at all.
Alec Bruce downplays social media and, from the point of view of most writers in the social media, it's no big money winner. But it is successful at great deal more than supporting charities. Social media gives us the information that the commercial media does not. The Times and Transcript, for example, publishes almost no news of any use. If you want to find out what's happening, you have to go to social media.
Admittedly, some social media outlets can be biased and even lying. But for the TandT, bias and lying are normal practice - so social media are still in the lead.
Steve Malloy is much improved. His column, too, is on Idle No More. But he works hard at offering a balanced view. And there is more information about the reasons for Idle No More than I have seen in all issues of the TandT put together. It neither supports nor attacks the movement. What is does is to try for a balanced presentation that should encourage thought. This is a good column.
Oh, but please drop the archaic language. Last week, it was terms like 'your humble columnist'. This week it's 'this fair city". That went out with spats. It's a term used now only by municipal politicians who have nothing else to say. Always keep writing clean, direct, and simple.
Excellent column by Suzuki.
There are some really good letters to the editor - and one bummer.
Outstanding is "Columnist's job is to comment. It's well written, and packs a solid punch. Also excellent are "Stop wholesale destruction of our heritage" and "No conditions on internet freedom".
But, oh, there's yet another one that the important thing in religious faith is that you must not believe in evolution. You can ignore the poor. You can hire single mothers at slave labour prices, you can kill people so long as they look, you know, different. You can make ordinary tax payers put out billions and even trillions for wars to make you richer, and then refuse to pay any taxes at all.
Kill, cheat, steal, subvert democracy to make yourself rich. And that's no problem. The Lord will forgive.
But believe in Darwinism? Then you never get to heaven and spend the next trillion years and more dancing around, singing your're a good God, God. And jumping up and down and clapping hands for Jesus.
Thanks. But if believing in Darwin will prevent me from spending eternity that way, I'll choose Darwin every time.
Get a life. And get a faith. A real one.
The idea of democracy is that we all have a right to have our own opinions, a right to express them publicly, and even to demonstrate peacefully. But a lofty position in society can give some people some pretty arrogant assumptions about just who is really allowed to have an opinion.
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Law and Order
Many years ago, I was pistol range officer for a very local police force, and became good friends with many of them. Those were the days anti-nuclear protests -always legal, always peaceful.
One of my friends couldn't wait for a local march to come along. He wanted to punch out one of those long haired hippies or anybody with a beard. He called them 'shit disturbers'.
Nothing in that had anything to do with the law. It had everything to do with protecting the interests of politicians and of very influential big business. In other words, he did not see his job so much as one protecting the law, but one of protecting the status quo. If you wanted change, then you were a suspect.
Many years ago, a good friend joined the local police When the Northwest Mounted Police were first sent out to the west, enforcing the law was not quite the reason they were sent. The prime purpose was to make sure nobody interfered or slowed down the building of the CPR. Workers went on strike because conditions were bad (as they were - and often excessively dangerous)? Then they were 'shit disturbers', and the job of the Northwest Mounted Police was to kick them back to work. Some NWMP were also trained as engineers and brakemen - just in case.
Then, as now, there were part-time soldiers, militia units, across Canada. These militia units had two primary roles. One was to be a social club for the wealthier citizens who were their officers. The other was to beat up on strikers. That second role was played quite frequently right across Canada. The last time, as I remember, was for a coal mine strike in Nova Scotia about 1920.
Like the NWMP, their role was not so much to enforce the law as to enforce the status quo. And that thinking remains common.
In the US, bankers cheated on a grand scale, and destroyed the economy. There were no charges. No pictures were taken. No names put on surveillance list. But Occupy Wall St. protesters who criticized (quite legally) what had been done were maced, their pictures and names put on record, their phone calls open to tapping - and many would end up on secret lists which forbade them to take a plane.
And God help you in the US if you look as though you might be Moslem.
When Tommy Douglas was an active politician, the RCMP kept him under surveillance for years. Douglas was profoundly religious, a clergyman, and as law-abiding as any human can be. But the RCMP considered him dangerous because he criticized the wealthy and the powerful. He introduced medicare. He wanted change. That made him a threat to the status quo, a 'shit disturber'. They have thousands of pages on him,thousands of pages of nothing.
When Mr. Irving and his friends announced they were members of the government - which means that they had a right to be involved in it without getting elected - that was a direct threat to democracy, and quite unconstitutional.(i.e. against the law). But nobody said a word.
Of course not. Mr. Irving and his friends have always run the government of New Brunswick. It may be unconstitutional. Certainly, if you or I were to bound into Alward's office and tell him what to do, there would be a policeman and the door in short time.
But in New Brunswick, that sort of behaviour is the status quo for the rich. It's in the interests of the wealthy and the influential. Therefore, it's okay.
However, if you, quite legally and peacefully, protest outside city hall, the police will have a video camera capturing your face.
Native peoples have been lied to and cheated by almost every federal government in the history of Canada. I have never heard of the police laying a charge against any liar or cheat in such a case. I have never heard of them putting the responsible minister under surveillance. But if native peoples use their legal right to protest, their pictures get taken, and their names put on lists.
If I were to steal a carton of cigarettes from a convenience store, I could face jail time. A British bank made billions of illegal dollars by laundering even more billions belonging to Mexican drug lords and to Al Quaeda. It was only with great difficulty that an attorney could get the case into court at all - and the only punishment was a fine.
Enforcing the law and protecting the status quo are not the same. But the wealthy and arrogant and influential think they are. They think that the primary job of the police is to keep things the way they like them. It's an attitude that is spread by newspapers (naming no names) that are ignorant or servile or both. The result is that it comes to be an attitude widely shared by all of us, and by the police.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Jan.17: What the hell is in Bill C-45?
Today, has a front page story about an Idle-No-More protest by New Brunswick native peoples in Miramichi. - and it still doesn't tell us what it's about. There's nothing about conditions in reserve life, nothing about Harper's wish to sell off national resources as quickly as possible whatever the damage to environment and to people. There's nothing about a century and more of broken agreements There are pictures. There are a couple of questions - though none that made any real attempt to report on the cause of all this.
Here is a movement that has spread across North America and all the way to New Zealand. And most of our news media are not saying why.
What we do get is a distasteful letter to the editor "Time to Occupy Attawapiskat?" It's essentially personal innuendo and personal attacks delivered to Chief Theresa Spence. It bears close resemblances to the trash that appeared yesterday. It carries the same leaks from a cooperative Stephen Harper, and much of the same wording.
It has the mandatory attack on CBC for trying to tell a fuller story. And it is wildly illogical. We are expected to believe that the only problem is in Attawapiskat, and the whole problem caused by Chief Spence. This is an ignorant and illogical letter - but it may be more than just that.
This is the third letter in two days to use pretty much the same approach to discussing Idle No More. It is rumour, government leaks, and language calculated to ignore the general problem while focussing on personal attacks on Spence. They're also worded to generate an attitude of contempt and hatred- almost racism.
I smell a communications company, one of those propaganda firms hired to get your message out. These letters look like part of a coordinated campaign. When you see a company that's called 'something' communications, think Dr. Goebbels.
This is really contemptible.
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The story is taken up again in section C, p. 1. This one, from Canadian Press, gets a little closer to the main point. Harper absolutely refuses to drop his legislation that would make most of Canada a free toilet for polluters like oil and mining companies. (duh... yeah...duh...but it might provide jobs...duh... And so it will. But not for you. So far, one of his agreements will allow a Chinese mining company to bring in its own labour from China It also forbids Canada to enact any new environment legislation, even if the mining operation generates dangerous levels of pollution that will harm generations to come ...duh...but it might provide jobs....duh...)
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The editorial, on mass transit in the city, is the usual mixture of ignorance, shaving foam and bubble gum. Moncton is going to have to think a lot more and a lot more imaginatively about the transit system and the plan for the city's future (if it has one) - or we face one gem of a problem within a decade or less.
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Norbert, alas, has returned to his old habit of talking about two, quite separate topics in one column - with the result that neither gets properly developed. It gets particularly weak in its second topic on a subject he knows little about - education.
He says that some school dropouts recover because they are really quite clever, and develop later on out of personal drive and ambition. That's simplistic.
The majority of dropouts come from poor families. Many of them are intelligent enough for advanced study. But few reach it because they have grown up in a culture that doesn't prize education or see it as a normal objective in life. Some, though not many, get lucky and move into social circles that open up a new world to them. That's not personal drive and ambition. That's luck.
Very few high school dropouts come from middle class families, and almost none from rich families. That's because they grow up in families in which higher education is part of normal life, and because they are surrounded by intellectual stimuli. I've seen this duplicated even in some very poor families whose culture includes high respect for education - notably among Jews and Orientals I have taught.
Rich kids have no problem. If they're slow, they get private instruction. Intelligence among the rich is not as high as one might expect - not nearly. But they finish high school and, usually, some university - if not much.
A blistering column from Alec Bruce is well worth a read.
Rod Allen on op ed is Rod Allen. He is obviously convinced he has a great wit. I expect he does-for special people. I have never know him to write on a serious topic or to have any insight to offer on anything. I guess that's how he became an editor for a newspaper whose purpose is to keep us in ignorance. He does a good job of that.
Jody Dallaire is a breath of intelligence, research, insight and and good writing. She'll never be an editor in the Irving press.
Gwynne Dyer is good on the fighting in Mali, though he never makes it clear why France, Britain, Canada, the US, etc. are so eager to step in. He does make one interesting point, though. Much of the financing for Moslem Jihadists in Mali and in Syria is coming from our good friends, the kingdom (dictatorship) of Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates (dictatorships). Why are they financing jihadists? Too keep them out of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Sounds like a dangerous game - as well as a murderous one.
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Oh - there is a quite disgusting interview with minister of Health Ted Flemming. This is the minister of Health who who says shale gas development is perfectly safe so long as it's properly done. There are just a couple of problems with that.
1. Nobody knows exactly what properly done means. There hasn't been nearly enough research yet.
2. He has publicly contradicted his own chief health officer - who is a doctor and who, I suspect, knows a good deal more about health than Mr. Flemming does.
Well... and three...this man, whose vague statements indicate that he has no idea what he's talking about has the nerve (slime) to attack his critics for being "transparently political and opportunistic".
Of course, the critics are political. This is a political issue. How else can it be dealt with except politically? Mr. Flemming uses political as it were a dirty word - which, understandably, is probably his own view of politics, a view well reflected in his behaviour.
And "opportunistic"? Does Mr. Flemming know what that word means? Is it bad to take opportunities? And what exactly is the sort of opportunism Mr. Flemming is referring to? All this so far is name-calling by a man who doesn't know what the names mean.
He ends with, "I feel it is irresponsible as a member of government not to explore this at least to the point of viability."
Quite so. And that is precisely what this twit has refused to do. He's not exploring it. He has made up his mind. (Or, more accurately probably, the shale gas developers told him he had made up his mind. It wouldn't take long. It's obviously a small mind to make up.)
Oh - and at such a news conference, the editors are supposed to ask questions like, "Mr. Minister, if shale drilling is perfectly safe, why did the province's chief call for more research? If its perfectly safe, how come there have been so many court cases, so much devaluation of property? How come so many scientists say it isn't safe? How can we know its safe when the companies won't even tell us what chemicals they are pumping into the ground? Can you see around corners, Mr. Minister?"
Or are you just lying?
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words, words....
I meant to start on police surveillance of protestors, commonly called 'radicals' and 'extremists' in our press. But I realized that first have to get our heads around those words. What is a radical? What is an extremist?
Well, radical does not mean left wing, or terrorist, or rabble-rouser - though it is commonly used that way. Radical refers to going to the root of a problem - which surely is a sensible thing to do. If you have a flat tire, you don't replace your windshield; you go to the root of the problem, the tire.
An extremist, obvously, refers to someone to goes to unnecessary and often foolish extremes in behaviour- like replacing the flat tire with one made of cast iron.
The Occupy Movement, the environmental movement, and Idle No More are, in the best sense, radical. They are trying to get at the root of the problem. And surely that is something that is to be praised rather than criticized.
Are they extreme? Surely not. Extreme would mean going farther than necessary is solving the problem - and since the government hasn't budged in its position, obviously they have not gone far enough. And that, by the way, is not the decision of those groups. The decision for extremism is made by governments who refuse to give any attention to the issue raises by protestors.
Extremist movements are pretty rare. And when they do happen, they are almost always movements of the rich and powerful.
The most extreme movement in New Brunswick history occurred a few years ago. It attracted little attention. There were no demonstrations. But it destroyed democracy in this province - and I think that's pretty extreme.
First, Mr. Irving announced he was in coalition with the government (an illegal act). Then he called a conference of flunkys who would plan the economic future of New Brunswick. That's not illegal - but it's pretty damned arrogant in a democracy for an unelected group to claim the right to plan our economic future.
Then it was announced that they would form an official committee to advise the Minister of Finance on economic matters (and the Minister was an ex-Irving executive already). That is probably the most extreme public move to destroy democracy in the history of this country. (though Harper has made some quiet ones that could take the prize.)
Oh, I should add that Mr. Irving and his flunkys had no authority or even ability to plan the economic future of a province. Such a plan requires considerable expertise in social decisions and objectives as well as in plans that do not just give away the farm to big business. They have taken on a role that is neither their right nor there business nor anywhere within their competence. And we will all pay the price for it.
Did you hear anything about police surveillance of Mr. Irving and his friends? Any newspaper rants about radicalism and extremism? Any letters to the editor accusing Mr. Irving and his gang of improper behaviour?
Leading US bankers destroyed millions of American and the western economies through illegal handling of funds. It was the greatest damage done to the US homeland ever. But I never saw the words radical or extreme. There was no prosecution, not even any questioning. Instead, they got hundreds of billions of dollars that American taxpayers will never be able to pay back, and that many millions will suffer for the rest of their lives - as will their children and their children's children.
Who did the police and the new media pick on to blame for it all? Who did they call "radicals" and "extremists"? Well, they picked on the victims, of course, those who had been robbed and cheated, and who protested against being robbed and cheated - the Occupy Movement.
In the same way, there is no police surveillance of the extremist behaviour of Stephen Harper for his neglectful (and possibly illegal) treatment of native peoples and his wholesale destruction of environmental protection and his failure to pursue the questions of robocalls (a pretty serious attack on democracy) and the graft of Brian Mulroney. Instead, they are keeping an eye on the victims of extremism - native peoples, those who care about the environment.......
Do the American spy agencies keep an eye on the National Rifle Association? I bet they don't, even though this is an organization which openly says it needs its weapons for an attack on the American government and its armed forces. But I bet they do have spies watching those dangerous people who protest against the NRA.
We have been brainwashed into unthinking uses of the words radical, extremist, terrorist. 3,000 innocent Americans get murdered on 9/11. That's terrorist. Americans murder 300,000 civilians, whole families, in Guatemala. That doesn't even make the news.
Obama invades any country he feels like invading, often by using drones and killing thousands of innocent people, and usually does it without even declaring war. I dunno. But that sounds kind of extreme. But I've never heard that word applied to it. An embargo is an act of war. There is a severe embargo on Iran, and has been one on Cuba for over fifty years. Both are illegal acts of war. Ever hear those called extreme?
Tomorrow, we'll take a look at how this affects police and public thinking.
Here is a movement that has spread across North America and all the way to New Zealand. And most of our news media are not saying why.
What we do get is a distasteful letter to the editor "Time to Occupy Attawapiskat?" It's essentially personal innuendo and personal attacks delivered to Chief Theresa Spence. It bears close resemblances to the trash that appeared yesterday. It carries the same leaks from a cooperative Stephen Harper, and much of the same wording.
It has the mandatory attack on CBC for trying to tell a fuller story. And it is wildly illogical. We are expected to believe that the only problem is in Attawapiskat, and the whole problem caused by Chief Spence. This is an ignorant and illogical letter - but it may be more than just that.
This is the third letter in two days to use pretty much the same approach to discussing Idle No More. It is rumour, government leaks, and language calculated to ignore the general problem while focussing on personal attacks on Spence. They're also worded to generate an attitude of contempt and hatred- almost racism.
I smell a communications company, one of those propaganda firms hired to get your message out. These letters look like part of a coordinated campaign. When you see a company that's called 'something' communications, think Dr. Goebbels.
This is really contemptible.
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The story is taken up again in section C, p. 1. This one, from Canadian Press, gets a little closer to the main point. Harper absolutely refuses to drop his legislation that would make most of Canada a free toilet for polluters like oil and mining companies. (duh... yeah...duh...but it might provide jobs...duh... And so it will. But not for you. So far, one of his agreements will allow a Chinese mining company to bring in its own labour from China It also forbids Canada to enact any new environment legislation, even if the mining operation generates dangerous levels of pollution that will harm generations to come ...duh...but it might provide jobs....duh...)
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The editorial, on mass transit in the city, is the usual mixture of ignorance, shaving foam and bubble gum. Moncton is going to have to think a lot more and a lot more imaginatively about the transit system and the plan for the city's future (if it has one) - or we face one gem of a problem within a decade or less.
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Norbert, alas, has returned to his old habit of talking about two, quite separate topics in one column - with the result that neither gets properly developed. It gets particularly weak in its second topic on a subject he knows little about - education.
He says that some school dropouts recover because they are really quite clever, and develop later on out of personal drive and ambition. That's simplistic.
The majority of dropouts come from poor families. Many of them are intelligent enough for advanced study. But few reach it because they have grown up in a culture that doesn't prize education or see it as a normal objective in life. Some, though not many, get lucky and move into social circles that open up a new world to them. That's not personal drive and ambition. That's luck.
Very few high school dropouts come from middle class families, and almost none from rich families. That's because they grow up in families in which higher education is part of normal life, and because they are surrounded by intellectual stimuli. I've seen this duplicated even in some very poor families whose culture includes high respect for education - notably among Jews and Orientals I have taught.
Rich kids have no problem. If they're slow, they get private instruction. Intelligence among the rich is not as high as one might expect - not nearly. But they finish high school and, usually, some university - if not much.
A blistering column from Alec Bruce is well worth a read.
Rod Allen on op ed is Rod Allen. He is obviously convinced he has a great wit. I expect he does-for special people. I have never know him to write on a serious topic or to have any insight to offer on anything. I guess that's how he became an editor for a newspaper whose purpose is to keep us in ignorance. He does a good job of that.
Jody Dallaire is a breath of intelligence, research, insight and and good writing. She'll never be an editor in the Irving press.
Gwynne Dyer is good on the fighting in Mali, though he never makes it clear why France, Britain, Canada, the US, etc. are so eager to step in. He does make one interesting point, though. Much of the financing for Moslem Jihadists in Mali and in Syria is coming from our good friends, the kingdom (dictatorship) of Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates (dictatorships). Why are they financing jihadists? Too keep them out of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Sounds like a dangerous game - as well as a murderous one.
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Oh - there is a quite disgusting interview with minister of Health Ted Flemming. This is the minister of Health who who says shale gas development is perfectly safe so long as it's properly done. There are just a couple of problems with that.
1. Nobody knows exactly what properly done means. There hasn't been nearly enough research yet.
2. He has publicly contradicted his own chief health officer - who is a doctor and who, I suspect, knows a good deal more about health than Mr. Flemming does.
Well... and three...this man, whose vague statements indicate that he has no idea what he's talking about has the nerve (slime) to attack his critics for being "transparently political and opportunistic".
Of course, the critics are political. This is a political issue. How else can it be dealt with except politically? Mr. Flemming uses political as it were a dirty word - which, understandably, is probably his own view of politics, a view well reflected in his behaviour.
And "opportunistic"? Does Mr. Flemming know what that word means? Is it bad to take opportunities? And what exactly is the sort of opportunism Mr. Flemming is referring to? All this so far is name-calling by a man who doesn't know what the names mean.
He ends with, "I feel it is irresponsible as a member of government not to explore this at least to the point of viability."
Quite so. And that is precisely what this twit has refused to do. He's not exploring it. He has made up his mind. (Or, more accurately probably, the shale gas developers told him he had made up his mind. It wouldn't take long. It's obviously a small mind to make up.)
Oh - and at such a news conference, the editors are supposed to ask questions like, "Mr. Minister, if shale drilling is perfectly safe, why did the province's chief call for more research? If its perfectly safe, how come there have been so many court cases, so much devaluation of property? How come so many scientists say it isn't safe? How can we know its safe when the companies won't even tell us what chemicals they are pumping into the ground? Can you see around corners, Mr. Minister?"
Or are you just lying?
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words, words....
I meant to start on police surveillance of protestors, commonly called 'radicals' and 'extremists' in our press. But I realized that first have to get our heads around those words. What is a radical? What is an extremist?
Well, radical does not mean left wing, or terrorist, or rabble-rouser - though it is commonly used that way. Radical refers to going to the root of a problem - which surely is a sensible thing to do. If you have a flat tire, you don't replace your windshield; you go to the root of the problem, the tire.
An extremist, obvously, refers to someone to goes to unnecessary and often foolish extremes in behaviour- like replacing the flat tire with one made of cast iron.
The Occupy Movement, the environmental movement, and Idle No More are, in the best sense, radical. They are trying to get at the root of the problem. And surely that is something that is to be praised rather than criticized.
Are they extreme? Surely not. Extreme would mean going farther than necessary is solving the problem - and since the government hasn't budged in its position, obviously they have not gone far enough. And that, by the way, is not the decision of those groups. The decision for extremism is made by governments who refuse to give any attention to the issue raises by protestors.
Extremist movements are pretty rare. And when they do happen, they are almost always movements of the rich and powerful.
The most extreme movement in New Brunswick history occurred a few years ago. It attracted little attention. There were no demonstrations. But it destroyed democracy in this province - and I think that's pretty extreme.
First, Mr. Irving announced he was in coalition with the government (an illegal act). Then he called a conference of flunkys who would plan the economic future of New Brunswick. That's not illegal - but it's pretty damned arrogant in a democracy for an unelected group to claim the right to plan our economic future.
Then it was announced that they would form an official committee to advise the Minister of Finance on economic matters (and the Minister was an ex-Irving executive already). That is probably the most extreme public move to destroy democracy in the history of this country. (though Harper has made some quiet ones that could take the prize.)
Oh, I should add that Mr. Irving and his flunkys had no authority or even ability to plan the economic future of a province. Such a plan requires considerable expertise in social decisions and objectives as well as in plans that do not just give away the farm to big business. They have taken on a role that is neither their right nor there business nor anywhere within their competence. And we will all pay the price for it.
Did you hear anything about police surveillance of Mr. Irving and his friends? Any newspaper rants about radicalism and extremism? Any letters to the editor accusing Mr. Irving and his gang of improper behaviour?
Leading US bankers destroyed millions of American and the western economies through illegal handling of funds. It was the greatest damage done to the US homeland ever. But I never saw the words radical or extreme. There was no prosecution, not even any questioning. Instead, they got hundreds of billions of dollars that American taxpayers will never be able to pay back, and that many millions will suffer for the rest of their lives - as will their children and their children's children.
Who did the police and the new media pick on to blame for it all? Who did they call "radicals" and "extremists"? Well, they picked on the victims, of course, those who had been robbed and cheated, and who protested against being robbed and cheated - the Occupy Movement.
In the same way, there is no police surveillance of the extremist behaviour of Stephen Harper for his neglectful (and possibly illegal) treatment of native peoples and his wholesale destruction of environmental protection and his failure to pursue the questions of robocalls (a pretty serious attack on democracy) and the graft of Brian Mulroney. Instead, they are keeping an eye on the victims of extremism - native peoples, those who care about the environment.......
Do the American spy agencies keep an eye on the National Rifle Association? I bet they don't, even though this is an organization which openly says it needs its weapons for an attack on the American government and its armed forces. But I bet they do have spies watching those dangerous people who protest against the NRA.
We have been brainwashed into unthinking uses of the words radical, extremist, terrorist. 3,000 innocent Americans get murdered on 9/11. That's terrorist. Americans murder 300,000 civilians, whole families, in Guatemala. That doesn't even make the news.
Obama invades any country he feels like invading, often by using drones and killing thousands of innocent people, and usually does it without even declaring war. I dunno. But that sounds kind of extreme. But I've never heard that word applied to it. An embargo is an act of war. There is a severe embargo on Iran, and has been one on Cuba for over fifty years. Both are illegal acts of war. Ever hear those called extreme?
Tomorrow, we'll take a look at how this affects police and public thinking.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
News as propaganda....
... and the op ed page as ignorance.
The headline on p.1 of NewsToday reads, "Democracy urged in Mali." Now there's a headline that tells us close to nothing - and is also a lie. There is serious fighting in Mali that amounts to a civil war. France is involved. Why? to bring democracy? Sure. France has a long record of bringing democracy to old colonies.
John Baird, our foreign affairs minister, is pledging help for the cause. Sure. John Baird gives a damn whether there is democracy in Mali. No doubt, he will now spread his wings and bring democracy to all the countries in Central America that are now under American imposed dictatorships or puppets.
Hey, nothing like helping to kill people to bring humanitarian aid to them. The US struggled to bring democracy and humanitarian aid to Vietnam by getting rid of the president in favour of a military dictatorship, then killed over two million civilians to give them a helping hand.
The same generosity of spirit killed a million or so in Iraq. That's not many, really, but you have to remember the hidden figures - the millions of orphans created, the widows and widowers, the permanently crippled, the dramatic rise in stillborns and birth defects. (And a continuing civil war.)
Last year, over 300 American soldiers, most suffering from PTSD, committed suicide. I would think that lots of those civilians who survive the horrors of war suffer from PTSD, too. But who cares? And who's counting?
The reality is there is a civil war in Mali because it was a French colony. The French ruled it as the British ruled their colonies, through divide and conquer. They would favour one group in a colony with positions and money, and us it to control the others. In British India, for example, the Moslems were favoured against the Hindus. That's why there was a civil war as soon as Britain pulled out - a civil war that led to the division of Moslem Pakistan from Hindu India. That's why, some 65 years later, those two countries are still at the edge of war - and both of them with nuclear arsenals.
The French pulled a similar deal in Mali. To make it worse, we joined a war in Libya to kill people for their own good and bring them democracy (and give us their oil). Of course, there is still no democracy - or even order - in Libya. And displaced groups from Libya joined their kinsmen in Mali. Thus a civil war.
Why is France there? Why is the US supporting it? Because us westerners are moving back in on Africa to bring back the old, colonial days.
Newspaper stories of foreign news rarely tell the truth. Instead, they babble about democracy, humanitarian motives. Same in Syria. If the western countries and our good friends in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates really wanted to stop the war in Syria, they could do it in day - just cut off all the weapons and money they are sending to the 'rebels'.
The message of the news is generally that them there foreigners is just animals that is always fightin'. In fact, these wars are commonly started and encouraged by us - and for reasons that have nothing to do with humanitarianism.
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There's a not-bad editorial on the charges of double-billing by some doctors, making it clear that the key word is 'some', and that nothing is proven. But de Adder misses the boat with a cartoon that suggests all or most doctors are guilty.
The second editorial is both ignorant and a stinker.It suggest the real solution to native peoples is to improve education.There are just two, little things in this suggestion that indicate bias and ignorance.
1. How would education solve the whole problem? Well, it would produce (in theory) graduates who would fit into the general population - so that the First Nations would disappear.
That's very generous compliment to education coming from a newspaper which has rarely shown it any respect. But it wouldn't work.
Children are formed by families and communities as much as by schools. The First Nations will not disappear through education - nor should they.
2. There was an agreement to hugely improve First Nations education. It was called the Kelowna Accord. Harper killed it. Remember?
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Solid op ed pieces by Alec Bruce and Norbert Cunningham. Read Bruce's, in particular, right to the end. It's about climate change - and those last bits are very disturbing. They also put the skids under the climate-change deniers.
Then there's the op-ed page..
Eric Lewis has a column on healthy eating. Moncton is a city with hospitals and universities. It has piles of people who can speak with authority on this subject. Eric Lewis can't. The op-ed page is an opinion page. That means this one is supposed to express the opinions of those who are authorities on a subject. This, for example, is where we should be able to get the background to understand what is going on in Mali, and why we are involved.
And what do we get? A thoroughly amateur piece that is the equivalent of a discussion taking place after the fifth round of beer.
Brian Cormier's column is even worse. It is yet another vignette about his personal life. I don't know how many people in Moncton lust to learn even more about the family life of Brian Cormier. If such there are, then it might be a good idea to have a weekly insert with room for pictures of Brian as a baby, his first birthday party, etc.
Of course, it's cheaper to use a reporter or staff writer for these pages than it is to get somebody who actually has something to say, and who knows the topic.
C4 has eight pictures - count them, eight - of people smiling. There's also a full page of pictures taken at the site of an apartment fire. You know the old saying - a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, it is, sometimes. But these pictures tell us nothing. So we have two pages of nothing. I would have settled for a dozen or so words.
Letters to the editor has a couple of good ones, both of them far superior to and better informed that the op-ed pieces by Eric Lewis and Brian Cormier. They are "Fox in charge of the chickens?" and "Don't be complacent about Canada's gun laws."
It also has something I have never seen before, a letter that had already appeared in an earlier edition, "Angered; but only about TV show". But editors are (more or less) human. We should take it as an encouraging sign if there is an editor so bored with this paper that he gets forgetful sometimes.
Oh - there is a story that Montreal police, including RCMP, have put anti-shale gas protestors under surveillance on the grounds they look like extremists and radicals. We would be very naive to think that New Brunswick police are not doing the same thing.
Some years ago, the RCMP mainained a long surveillance of the radical and extreme Tommy Douglas. You know, he was the clergyman who brought his religious principles into politics, and introduced medicare. Gotta watch people like that.
Funny, there has been no such surveillance of the US bankers who, by carrying out unethical and even illegal practices, threw the western economies into turmoil, and destroyed the lives of millions of Americans. Nor has there been any surveillance of the radical and extreme behaviour of the prominent New Brunswick business leader who publicly announced he was a member of the New Brunswick government - even though he wasn't elected.
Actually, the radical extremists who have made huge changes in our society, effectively destroying democracy, have not been demonstrators in the street. They have been arrogant business leaders sitting in the comfort of their offices.
But that's a topic for a other blog.
The headline on p.1 of NewsToday reads, "Democracy urged in Mali." Now there's a headline that tells us close to nothing - and is also a lie. There is serious fighting in Mali that amounts to a civil war. France is involved. Why? to bring democracy? Sure. France has a long record of bringing democracy to old colonies.
John Baird, our foreign affairs minister, is pledging help for the cause. Sure. John Baird gives a damn whether there is democracy in Mali. No doubt, he will now spread his wings and bring democracy to all the countries in Central America that are now under American imposed dictatorships or puppets.
Hey, nothing like helping to kill people to bring humanitarian aid to them. The US struggled to bring democracy and humanitarian aid to Vietnam by getting rid of the president in favour of a military dictatorship, then killed over two million civilians to give them a helping hand.
The same generosity of spirit killed a million or so in Iraq. That's not many, really, but you have to remember the hidden figures - the millions of orphans created, the widows and widowers, the permanently crippled, the dramatic rise in stillborns and birth defects. (And a continuing civil war.)
Last year, over 300 American soldiers, most suffering from PTSD, committed suicide. I would think that lots of those civilians who survive the horrors of war suffer from PTSD, too. But who cares? And who's counting?
The reality is there is a civil war in Mali because it was a French colony. The French ruled it as the British ruled their colonies, through divide and conquer. They would favour one group in a colony with positions and money, and us it to control the others. In British India, for example, the Moslems were favoured against the Hindus. That's why there was a civil war as soon as Britain pulled out - a civil war that led to the division of Moslem Pakistan from Hindu India. That's why, some 65 years later, those two countries are still at the edge of war - and both of them with nuclear arsenals.
The French pulled a similar deal in Mali. To make it worse, we joined a war in Libya to kill people for their own good and bring them democracy (and give us their oil). Of course, there is still no democracy - or even order - in Libya. And displaced groups from Libya joined their kinsmen in Mali. Thus a civil war.
Why is France there? Why is the US supporting it? Because us westerners are moving back in on Africa to bring back the old, colonial days.
Newspaper stories of foreign news rarely tell the truth. Instead, they babble about democracy, humanitarian motives. Same in Syria. If the western countries and our good friends in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates really wanted to stop the war in Syria, they could do it in day - just cut off all the weapons and money they are sending to the 'rebels'.
The message of the news is generally that them there foreigners is just animals that is always fightin'. In fact, these wars are commonly started and encouraged by us - and for reasons that have nothing to do with humanitarianism.
_______________________________________________________________________________
There's a not-bad editorial on the charges of double-billing by some doctors, making it clear that the key word is 'some', and that nothing is proven. But de Adder misses the boat with a cartoon that suggests all or most doctors are guilty.
The second editorial is both ignorant and a stinker.It suggest the real solution to native peoples is to improve education.There are just two, little things in this suggestion that indicate bias and ignorance.
1. How would education solve the whole problem? Well, it would produce (in theory) graduates who would fit into the general population - so that the First Nations would disappear.
That's very generous compliment to education coming from a newspaper which has rarely shown it any respect. But it wouldn't work.
Children are formed by families and communities as much as by schools. The First Nations will not disappear through education - nor should they.
2. There was an agreement to hugely improve First Nations education. It was called the Kelowna Accord. Harper killed it. Remember?
_________________________________________________________________________________
Solid op ed pieces by Alec Bruce and Norbert Cunningham. Read Bruce's, in particular, right to the end. It's about climate change - and those last bits are very disturbing. They also put the skids under the climate-change deniers.
Then there's the op-ed page..
Eric Lewis has a column on healthy eating. Moncton is a city with hospitals and universities. It has piles of people who can speak with authority on this subject. Eric Lewis can't. The op-ed page is an opinion page. That means this one is supposed to express the opinions of those who are authorities on a subject. This, for example, is where we should be able to get the background to understand what is going on in Mali, and why we are involved.
And what do we get? A thoroughly amateur piece that is the equivalent of a discussion taking place after the fifth round of beer.
Brian Cormier's column is even worse. It is yet another vignette about his personal life. I don't know how many people in Moncton lust to learn even more about the family life of Brian Cormier. If such there are, then it might be a good idea to have a weekly insert with room for pictures of Brian as a baby, his first birthday party, etc.
Of course, it's cheaper to use a reporter or staff writer for these pages than it is to get somebody who actually has something to say, and who knows the topic.
C4 has eight pictures - count them, eight - of people smiling. There's also a full page of pictures taken at the site of an apartment fire. You know the old saying - a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, it is, sometimes. But these pictures tell us nothing. So we have two pages of nothing. I would have settled for a dozen or so words.
Letters to the editor has a couple of good ones, both of them far superior to and better informed that the op-ed pieces by Eric Lewis and Brian Cormier. They are "Fox in charge of the chickens?" and "Don't be complacent about Canada's gun laws."
It also has something I have never seen before, a letter that had already appeared in an earlier edition, "Angered; but only about TV show". But editors are (more or less) human. We should take it as an encouraging sign if there is an editor so bored with this paper that he gets forgetful sometimes.
Oh - there is a story that Montreal police, including RCMP, have put anti-shale gas protestors under surveillance on the grounds they look like extremists and radicals. We would be very naive to think that New Brunswick police are not doing the same thing.
Some years ago, the RCMP mainained a long surveillance of the radical and extreme Tommy Douglas. You know, he was the clergyman who brought his religious principles into politics, and introduced medicare. Gotta watch people like that.
Funny, there has been no such surveillance of the US bankers who, by carrying out unethical and even illegal practices, threw the western economies into turmoil, and destroyed the lives of millions of Americans. Nor has there been any surveillance of the radical and extreme behaviour of the prominent New Brunswick business leader who publicly announced he was a member of the New Brunswick government - even though he wasn't elected.
Actually, the radical extremists who have made huge changes in our society, effectively destroying democracy, have not been demonstrators in the street. They have been arrogant business leaders sitting in the comfort of their offices.
But that's a topic for a other blog.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Jan. 15: Do you know.......
....the top baby names for Nova Scotia in 2012? Hah! And you call yourself well informed. Well catch up. You can get the whole story on p. A 8 of today's Moncton Times and Transcript.
Okay. there's nothing here about shale gas, the biggest story of the year. There's nothing about Idle No More, a Canadian protest that has spread far beyond Canada. Nothing about the strangeness of land deals concerning the "events" centre and Moncton High. Nothing bout why the provincial government never ordered the owners of Highfield Square to clear out their contamination.
But - oh - you want to know about baby names in Nova Scotia?
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NewsToday is that Harper is sending a C-17 (transport plane) to Mali to assist France and Britain in putting down essentially terrorist entities. (What the hell is an "essentially" terrorist entity?) He says all permanent members of the UN security council have demanded international action. (Okay. So how come only Britain and France have taken action?) And if this is such a big deal, how come Canada is sending only one transport plane, and that for only one week?
The real story goes back to the years after World War Two. Until then, European powers, notably Britain and France and Belgium held most of Africa as a group of colonies. It was a good deal. They got oil and other resources, cheap labour; and in return they gave unlimited pollution and poverty. But the war had weakened the colonizing powers so much that they could not hold on. The colonies grabbed their chance for independence. It usually didn't last.
In Congo, for example, big business simply used hired thugs to overthrow the elected president, and carried on in the same, old way. It still does.
The US entered the scene as well. American policy throughout World War Two and after had been to take over the old, western colonies for the American Empire (along with much of Latin America, The Phillipines, etc.) That is why the US joined the British and French to overthrow the elected government of Iran. That's why the US went to to the aid of France in Vietnam. (The claim was they wished to protect democracy. In fact, the US cooperated in overthrowing the elected government to establish a military dictatorship.)
Wars such as these, constant interference such as this, a predatory capitalism, is what created Moslem distrust and Al Quaeda. Today, there are American troops and CIA agents in almost every country in Africa as they attempt the new conquest of that continent. Jihad did not spring from nowhere. Terrorism didn't come from nowhere. There were reactions to to massive american interference, including mass killing, torture, and terrorism.
But the US needed a cover for this. So it called on NATO to make the whole thing appear to be an international effort to bring peace and democracy to the world. France and Britain, seeing a chance to restore some of their old power and easy wealth happily signed on.
Canada, under pressure from big business to maintain close relations with the US - and with Canadian business hoping to pick up some of the spoils, signed on for Afghanistan.
We learned from Afghanistan that most of these wars turn into dreadful and expensive mistakes. But we still need to keep close to the US. That's why we cut our role in Afghanistan back to training. That's why we're now sending just one transport to Mali for just one week.
Oh, why don't Africans like western big business? Well, for example.... a Canadian gold mining company in Eritrea called Nevsun has been using conscripted (kidnapped) labour to work 15 hours a day, 6 days a week, with terrible food and no toilets - for $15 a month. Nevsun claims, of course, to have been unaware of this. In fact, it's quite common for Canadian mining companies in Africa and Central America. So is the unlimited pollution they intend to inflict on us as soon as Bill C-45 gets signed.
But you would never guess any of this from the news stories in today's TandT.
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The lead editorial is yet another pitch for building a hundred million dollar hockey rink.
Norbert's column...sigh....it's not quite a rant. It's an attack on people who use the internet to spread stories that are untrue and often defamatory. Well, okay. And I appreciate your concern Norbert. But you have spent your life working for Irving press which exists to keep people from learning the truth, to spread misleading information, to spread propaganda for those who do us damage. Your're in no position to point the finger at the social media.
His "The last word" item is just silly. Social media is NOT just about spreading information. It's also about offering opinion and thinking about information, something which the Irving press does not do. And, surely, anyone who willingly works for the Irving press has one hell of a nerve in accusing others of not thinking.
I'm not sure I follow the point of Alec Bruce's column.
de Adder's cartoon makes the point that per capita health costs in New Brunswick are higher than the Canadian average. So? That is useless information without knowing why they're higher. Readers will easily jump to the conclusion which, I suspect, is favoured by the Irving press that it's all the fault of the doctors. I think I'd like to see a more sophisticated study.
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On the op ed page, Alan Cochrane starts well, but gets bogged down in ideology. The says about the cuts to EI, "But real job creation comes from government clearing the way for enterpreneurs to turn their bright ideas into business successes." Cochrane, open your eyes and look around you.
The way is very clear for enterpreneurs in North America - at least for the very big ones. They own the governments. It's the same in Spain, in Britain, in the US, in Congo in Haiti. It was the same in the depression of the 1930s. Big business does NOT create wealth - except for itself. It never has. It has made increasing profits every year since the recession started. But the wealth of most of us has not gone up. It has gone down.
If more freedom for business created wealth for the rest of the people, then the Magnetic Hill Casino would be jammed every weekend with wealthy Haitians and Congolese and Greeks flashing thousand dollar bills. The idea that business creates wealth is an ideology that has been drummed into us by propaganda tanks like The Institute of Atlantic Market Studies and the The Fraser Institute. It is not true. It doesn't work. It has never worked. All it has even done by its own will is to create wealth for itself, and to bleed everybody else dry. Capitalism without control on it is a disaster that we are just entering.
Speaking of The Fraser Institute, it has an op ed by Mark Milke who is a Senior Fellow (old propagandist). It's about the Idle No More Movement.It's solution is one tailor made to please big business. Get native peoples off the reserves and into cities. Problem solved. He has statistics, too. They don't prove anything he says they do. But they look good.
Yessirree. Just move them into cities; the cities will absorb them; native peoples will cease to exist. Problem solved. I mean, we won't even know they're there. And if we don't know,then there can't be any problem. Oh, and that will also open up all that reserve country to resource extraction pollution. And that's good for big business.
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Any knuckle-draggers who want to read more along the line of Mr. Milke's deep thoughts will find it in a couple of letters to the editor. One of them is simply made of half-truths (and some lies) that Harper has been spreading. Much of that comes from Sun News, a newspaper designed to appeal to people who find the Irving press too intellectually challenging.
Another letter from a deep thinker says we didn't take land from the native peoples because they didn't occupy the whole country. Brilliant. Ever notice that we don't occupy the whole country? So anybody should feel free to invade. It's an extraordinary piece of misinformation, bad logic, and looking down on people.
The only thing worth reading in this really dismal edition is that actress Margaret O'Brien is 76.
Okay. there's nothing here about shale gas, the biggest story of the year. There's nothing about Idle No More, a Canadian protest that has spread far beyond Canada. Nothing about the strangeness of land deals concerning the "events" centre and Moncton High. Nothing bout why the provincial government never ordered the owners of Highfield Square to clear out their contamination.
But - oh - you want to know about baby names in Nova Scotia?
____________________________________________________________________________
NewsToday is that Harper is sending a C-17 (transport plane) to Mali to assist France and Britain in putting down essentially terrorist entities. (What the hell is an "essentially" terrorist entity?) He says all permanent members of the UN security council have demanded international action. (Okay. So how come only Britain and France have taken action?) And if this is such a big deal, how come Canada is sending only one transport plane, and that for only one week?
The real story goes back to the years after World War Two. Until then, European powers, notably Britain and France and Belgium held most of Africa as a group of colonies. It was a good deal. They got oil and other resources, cheap labour; and in return they gave unlimited pollution and poverty. But the war had weakened the colonizing powers so much that they could not hold on. The colonies grabbed their chance for independence. It usually didn't last.
In Congo, for example, big business simply used hired thugs to overthrow the elected president, and carried on in the same, old way. It still does.
The US entered the scene as well. American policy throughout World War Two and after had been to take over the old, western colonies for the American Empire (along with much of Latin America, The Phillipines, etc.) That is why the US joined the British and French to overthrow the elected government of Iran. That's why the US went to to the aid of France in Vietnam. (The claim was they wished to protect democracy. In fact, the US cooperated in overthrowing the elected government to establish a military dictatorship.)
Wars such as these, constant interference such as this, a predatory capitalism, is what created Moslem distrust and Al Quaeda. Today, there are American troops and CIA agents in almost every country in Africa as they attempt the new conquest of that continent. Jihad did not spring from nowhere. Terrorism didn't come from nowhere. There were reactions to to massive american interference, including mass killing, torture, and terrorism.
But the US needed a cover for this. So it called on NATO to make the whole thing appear to be an international effort to bring peace and democracy to the world. France and Britain, seeing a chance to restore some of their old power and easy wealth happily signed on.
Canada, under pressure from big business to maintain close relations with the US - and with Canadian business hoping to pick up some of the spoils, signed on for Afghanistan.
We learned from Afghanistan that most of these wars turn into dreadful and expensive mistakes. But we still need to keep close to the US. That's why we cut our role in Afghanistan back to training. That's why we're now sending just one transport to Mali for just one week.
Oh, why don't Africans like western big business? Well, for example.... a Canadian gold mining company in Eritrea called Nevsun has been using conscripted (kidnapped) labour to work 15 hours a day, 6 days a week, with terrible food and no toilets - for $15 a month. Nevsun claims, of course, to have been unaware of this. In fact, it's quite common for Canadian mining companies in Africa and Central America. So is the unlimited pollution they intend to inflict on us as soon as Bill C-45 gets signed.
But you would never guess any of this from the news stories in today's TandT.
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The lead editorial is yet another pitch for building a hundred million dollar hockey rink.
Norbert's column...sigh....it's not quite a rant. It's an attack on people who use the internet to spread stories that are untrue and often defamatory. Well, okay. And I appreciate your concern Norbert. But you have spent your life working for Irving press which exists to keep people from learning the truth, to spread misleading information, to spread propaganda for those who do us damage. Your're in no position to point the finger at the social media.
His "The last word" item is just silly. Social media is NOT just about spreading information. It's also about offering opinion and thinking about information, something which the Irving press does not do. And, surely, anyone who willingly works for the Irving press has one hell of a nerve in accusing others of not thinking.
I'm not sure I follow the point of Alec Bruce's column.
de Adder's cartoon makes the point that per capita health costs in New Brunswick are higher than the Canadian average. So? That is useless information without knowing why they're higher. Readers will easily jump to the conclusion which, I suspect, is favoured by the Irving press that it's all the fault of the doctors. I think I'd like to see a more sophisticated study.
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On the op ed page, Alan Cochrane starts well, but gets bogged down in ideology. The says about the cuts to EI, "But real job creation comes from government clearing the way for enterpreneurs to turn their bright ideas into business successes." Cochrane, open your eyes and look around you.
The way is very clear for enterpreneurs in North America - at least for the very big ones. They own the governments. It's the same in Spain, in Britain, in the US, in Congo in Haiti. It was the same in the depression of the 1930s. Big business does NOT create wealth - except for itself. It never has. It has made increasing profits every year since the recession started. But the wealth of most of us has not gone up. It has gone down.
If more freedom for business created wealth for the rest of the people, then the Magnetic Hill Casino would be jammed every weekend with wealthy Haitians and Congolese and Greeks flashing thousand dollar bills. The idea that business creates wealth is an ideology that has been drummed into us by propaganda tanks like The Institute of Atlantic Market Studies and the The Fraser Institute. It is not true. It doesn't work. It has never worked. All it has even done by its own will is to create wealth for itself, and to bleed everybody else dry. Capitalism without control on it is a disaster that we are just entering.
Speaking of The Fraser Institute, it has an op ed by Mark Milke who is a Senior Fellow (old propagandist). It's about the Idle No More Movement.It's solution is one tailor made to please big business. Get native peoples off the reserves and into cities. Problem solved. He has statistics, too. They don't prove anything he says they do. But they look good.
Yessirree. Just move them into cities; the cities will absorb them; native peoples will cease to exist. Problem solved. I mean, we won't even know they're there. And if we don't know,then there can't be any problem. Oh, and that will also open up all that reserve country to resource extraction pollution. And that's good for big business.
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Any knuckle-draggers who want to read more along the line of Mr. Milke's deep thoughts will find it in a couple of letters to the editor. One of them is simply made of half-truths (and some lies) that Harper has been spreading. Much of that comes from Sun News, a newspaper designed to appeal to people who find the Irving press too intellectually challenging.
Another letter from a deep thinker says we didn't take land from the native peoples because they didn't occupy the whole country. Brilliant. Ever notice that we don't occupy the whole country? So anybody should feel free to invade. It's an extraordinary piece of misinformation, bad logic, and looking down on people.
The only thing worth reading in this really dismal edition is that actress Margaret O'Brien is 76.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Jan. 14: mea culpa.....
Yesterday I referred to a blog site with excellent blogs by Karl Nerenberg as being "rabble-rouser.ca" It's not. It's just "rabble.ca". (Later, I'll think of a self-pitying excuse for my error.) I was also wrong in referring to UNB as having a Journalism programme. That's St. Thomas U.
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Saturday's paper referred to a house given by Kenneth Irving to help a national group called Waterkeeper which tries to protect the purity of our water supply. That's certainly welcome at a time when Harper plans to, within days, destroy most of our water protection legislation. It's a commendable gift, especially at this time when N.B. water is threatened by shale gas development. There's also an intriguing story behind it. I owe this story to my untiring and praiseworthy search for the facts - and to a reader who sent it to me.
A year or so ago, Kenneth Irving met Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then the lawyer and now the president of Riverkeepers in New York, an organization dedicated to protecting the water supply of the state - especially from shale gas.
Originally a supporter of shale gas, Kennedy became an enemy of it as he learned more about it. He has fought many cases in court against the developers. Funny how the TandT never mentioned that - or the court cases and problems in every state in which shale gas development is going on.
Remember those stories about how shale gas could get into the water table so that kitchen taps can breathe fire? (Well, of course, if you read only the TandT, you wouldn't have seen any such pictures.) So check out National Geographic for December 2012. Turn to pages 100-101. See a woman set her tap water on fire. Can you imagine drinking that stuff? (The gas company denies all responsibility, and will doubtless be able to find a UNB professor to support its claim.)
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Chief Theresa Spence is down to seven inches of column in section C, p. 1. It's a story that says nothing, and fails to mention that Harper has done and promised to do nothing. Meanwhile, other newspapers across Canada are printing innuendo supplied by Harper. We have still been told nothing about conditions on First Nations reserves, not even here in our own province.Watch for even less. We're now into the process called burying a story.
Oh - and the Governor General will have signed bill C-45, a main concern of the protest, long before any future next meeting. So what's the point?
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Theresa Spence got 7 column inches. But the TandT was able to spare 11 column inches for a front page story about a cat that went on a diet. Another front page read-all-about-it concerning last year's Farmers' Almanac was deemed worthy of 24 inches. Also on front page story was another story that wasn't a story at all. It concerned, of course, the proposed hockey rink (events centre). It ran to 36 inches.
This one points to the example of London, Ontario, which built a centre through a city/private business "partnership". It nicely dismisses the fact that London is over three times the size of Moncton, and has a very large population close to it to draw on.
As yet another piece of hype for the centre, this is an opinion piece rather than a news story. (A news story is about something that happened. It is not about what the writer thinks should happen.) Accordingly, it's full of gushing language like 'visionary', 'dreams come true' that are a pitch rather than a news story.
In these partnerships, of course, the private investors get most of the profit. But the taxpayers pay the lion's share of the bill.
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The Your Investments page, always a fuzzy one, uses the greater part of its space for a story that Michael McCain of Maple Leaf Foods has to pay his former wife 175 thousand a month in alimony. So? Who cares? And what does this have to do with My Investments? I have nothing to do with his ex-wife. I swear.
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As for International News, forget it. There's no mention of the new war in Mali being fought by the French with British support. This is really a huge story because it's part of the western reconquest of Africa, for which reason the US now has substantial forces, plus CIA and special ops, spread throughout the continent. W';re back to 1880 and conquest and exploitation and Rudyard Kipling all over again as the troubled US/western Europe Empire tries to save its power and the wealth it gets from Africa. There is a strong possibility Canada will get sucked into it. (The US, Britain, and France need us to create the illusion this is a NATO operation to spread democracy and fight terrorism. In fact, we are the terrorists.)
But don't worry about it. Read the big story about how a Brooklyn woman (white, of course) won the Miss America title.
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The editorial is, well, the editorial. It's an opinion. But since we have no idea whose opinion it is or what qualifications he/she has, why read it?
The cartoon is cute in its portrayal of the Governor-General as powerless. It is also wrong.
The governor-general's power is as great as he can get away with. That has not been tested since the late 1920s - and the circumstances then were quite different. Minimally, and without question, he has the power to resign rather than to give his approval to a piece of legislation like Bill C-45.
Norbert - alas. He's back to writing a column with three topics with the result that none of them can be developed And all three, while mildly interesting, have no point whatever.
On the op ed page, Allen Ablel, as always, is irrelevant.
Craig Babstock? Well, readable, convincing. No great insights, and nothing we can do anything about. But it's respectable.
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There are just two sections of today's paper that are worth reading. One is Alec Bruce's column - and that's very worth reading. Though Bruce doesn't say so, there is a close connection between his warning, and the silly article on the events centre that appears on the first page.
The other part worth reading is letters to the editor. The letters sure beat the pants off the rest of this paper.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Saturday's paper referred to a house given by Kenneth Irving to help a national group called Waterkeeper which tries to protect the purity of our water supply. That's certainly welcome at a time when Harper plans to, within days, destroy most of our water protection legislation. It's a commendable gift, especially at this time when N.B. water is threatened by shale gas development. There's also an intriguing story behind it. I owe this story to my untiring and praiseworthy search for the facts - and to a reader who sent it to me.
A year or so ago, Kenneth Irving met Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then the lawyer and now the president of Riverkeepers in New York, an organization dedicated to protecting the water supply of the state - especially from shale gas.
Originally a supporter of shale gas, Kennedy became an enemy of it as he learned more about it. He has fought many cases in court against the developers. Funny how the TandT never mentioned that - or the court cases and problems in every state in which shale gas development is going on.
Remember those stories about how shale gas could get into the water table so that kitchen taps can breathe fire? (Well, of course, if you read only the TandT, you wouldn't have seen any such pictures.) So check out National Geographic for December 2012. Turn to pages 100-101. See a woman set her tap water on fire. Can you imagine drinking that stuff? (The gas company denies all responsibility, and will doubtless be able to find a UNB professor to support its claim.)
____________________________________________________________________________
Chief Theresa Spence is down to seven inches of column in section C, p. 1. It's a story that says nothing, and fails to mention that Harper has done and promised to do nothing. Meanwhile, other newspapers across Canada are printing innuendo supplied by Harper. We have still been told nothing about conditions on First Nations reserves, not even here in our own province.Watch for even less. We're now into the process called burying a story.
Oh - and the Governor General will have signed bill C-45, a main concern of the protest, long before any future next meeting. So what's the point?
___________________________________________________________________________
Theresa Spence got 7 column inches. But the TandT was able to spare 11 column inches for a front page story about a cat that went on a diet. Another front page read-all-about-it concerning last year's Farmers' Almanac was deemed worthy of 24 inches. Also on front page story was another story that wasn't a story at all. It concerned, of course, the proposed hockey rink (events centre). It ran to 36 inches.
This one points to the example of London, Ontario, which built a centre through a city/private business "partnership". It nicely dismisses the fact that London is over three times the size of Moncton, and has a very large population close to it to draw on.
As yet another piece of hype for the centre, this is an opinion piece rather than a news story. (A news story is about something that happened. It is not about what the writer thinks should happen.) Accordingly, it's full of gushing language like 'visionary', 'dreams come true' that are a pitch rather than a news story.
In these partnerships, of course, the private investors get most of the profit. But the taxpayers pay the lion's share of the bill.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The Your Investments page, always a fuzzy one, uses the greater part of its space for a story that Michael McCain of Maple Leaf Foods has to pay his former wife 175 thousand a month in alimony. So? Who cares? And what does this have to do with My Investments? I have nothing to do with his ex-wife. I swear.
_______________________________________________________________________________
As for International News, forget it. There's no mention of the new war in Mali being fought by the French with British support. This is really a huge story because it's part of the western reconquest of Africa, for which reason the US now has substantial forces, plus CIA and special ops, spread throughout the continent. W';re back to 1880 and conquest and exploitation and Rudyard Kipling all over again as the troubled US/western Europe Empire tries to save its power and the wealth it gets from Africa. There is a strong possibility Canada will get sucked into it. (The US, Britain, and France need us to create the illusion this is a NATO operation to spread democracy and fight terrorism. In fact, we are the terrorists.)
But don't worry about it. Read the big story about how a Brooklyn woman (white, of course) won the Miss America title.
___________________________________________________________________________
The editorial is, well, the editorial. It's an opinion. But since we have no idea whose opinion it is or what qualifications he/she has, why read it?
The cartoon is cute in its portrayal of the Governor-General as powerless. It is also wrong.
The governor-general's power is as great as he can get away with. That has not been tested since the late 1920s - and the circumstances then were quite different. Minimally, and without question, he has the power to resign rather than to give his approval to a piece of legislation like Bill C-45.
Norbert - alas. He's back to writing a column with three topics with the result that none of them can be developed And all three, while mildly interesting, have no point whatever.
On the op ed page, Allen Ablel, as always, is irrelevant.
Craig Babstock? Well, readable, convincing. No great insights, and nothing we can do anything about. But it's respectable.
________________________________________________________________________________
There are just two sections of today's paper that are worth reading. One is Alec Bruce's column - and that's very worth reading. Though Bruce doesn't say so, there is a close connection between his warning, and the silly article on the events centre that appears on the first page.
The other part worth reading is letters to the editor. The letters sure beat the pants off the rest of this paper.
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